"Do you think you'll get your own squad after what happened last night?"

"Indeed, I believe so."

A brief comment from my accompanying guardsman reminded me of my of my upcoming duties. It was nothing set in stone, but it was likely. Something I didn't look forward to and, indeed, dreaded. It hadn't always been this way and in another time or another place, I would have been honored.

But not this time.

Mikael recognized my discomfort at the question, and shifted his focus back to our task for today. Count the dead. Locate any wounded. Locate survivors. Determine motive. These tasks may have been given to a detective of sorts in the past, but men with those qualifications were few in Dunwall now. The job was handed off to people like myself; Watchmen who had been previously relegated to deskwork.

Motive was obvious this time around. The Masked Man had come to Dunwall Tower for clearly one reason; kill the Lord Regent. And what a success it was! Walls of Light, Arc Pylons, and a slew of City Watch couldn't stop him. Traditional armaments were useless against him, as evidenced by severed limbs and strewn weaponry laying about the halls of the tower. It was nothing new. If he wanted you gone, you were gone, and anything or anyone protecting you would not see tomorrow's day.

There were never any wounded, although the occasional survivor would pop up in some obscure corner of the Masked Man's slaughtering grounds. Dead men, however, were never in short supply.

So far, Mikael and I had counted 47 individuals cut down, mostly Officers with a speckle of lower Guardsmen to fill in gaps in the tower's security perimeter, which clearly hadn't made any difference. Along with that, a few of the servants joined the list, pointless casualties. There was no sign of the Royal Interrogator, but in truth I didn't much care to go looking for him. And of course, the Lord Regent himself was among the deceased. We suspected even more dead that we couldn't find, probably fried from inverted Pylons or Walls of Light. These tools had come to be more of a threat to us than a boon in recent days.

As we continued our work, I noticed the acting Captain eyeing the men charged with this cleanup a little too intently. Someone would have to take over for those who lost their lives here, and what better option than the men in front of him now? Truly, there was no other choice, for those fit for duty had already been murdered. The task now fell to anyone with the most basic of potential for the role.

The Captain's eyes looked to me again with a gaze too keen, and that's why I knew I was doomed.

I'd proudly be promoted to an Officer position and given my own squad of misguided men to lead, deployed to only the most critical of locations across the City. And I'd become the very fodder standing between the Killer and his Target that I counted now.

Having one's own squad was no longer a sign of honor, of respect, of merit.

On the next episode of Michiko and Hatchin, be prepared to still not understand the situation, for the previous episode to not actually be related to the current one, child abuse, child abuse, child abuse, and misery.